The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

“Now we’re getting on,” said Mme. Storey. “Coon-skin coats cannot be

very common down on Bleecker Street.”

“But he didn’t wear it down there,” said the doctor. “I chaffed him

about it a little, and he said he wouldn’t dare be seen in it around

home. He said he always hired it when he wanted to step out up-town.

When I expressed my surprise that you could hire anything so valuable

as a fur coat, he said he had a pull with the old clo’ man, that they

did business together regularly.”

“Then our first task must be to find that old clo’ man,” said Mme.

Storey.

My instructions were to find a cheap restaurant or lunchroom along the

most frequented part of Bleecker Street, and to get into conversation

with the lady cashier. I chose three-thirty as the hour when such

places would be least busy. I was disguised as a servant girl on her

day out. I found my lunchroom and ordered a piece of mince pie and a

cup of coffee for which I had not the least desire.

When I paid my check I lingered beside the cashier’s desk with a smile

of foolish good-nature.

“I allus eats my lunch late,” I said. “You kin take your time and eat

comfortable wit’out bein’ pushed by the crowd.”

The cashier’s glance said that she didn’t give a damn if I never got

any lunch, but I didn’t care. I had her penned behind her little

counter where she couldn’t escape. By degrees I came round to the

inevitable “boy-friend.” She yawned behind her manicured fingers. I

told how my boy-friend was going to take me to a dance at Webster’s

Hall on Sat’ay night. I described the dress I was going to wear.

“Pink satin with ribbon dangles ending in little pompoms!” she

repeated, elevating her plucked eyebrows as much as to say: You would!

“I do hate to wear me old coat goin’ in,” I said. “If they was on’y

some place I could hire a fur coat I wouldn’t mind spendin’ the money.

I don’t care what I spend to look good. That’s me. My boy-friend, he

said he’d hire a coon-skin coat to match me if he knew where to go for

it.”

“Go to Ikey’s at — Sixth Avenue,” she said; “they hire fur coats for

ladies and gents. It’s the on’y place I know of.”

“Is zat so?” I said, and talked on for a while. Finally I drifted out

followed by a crushing glance from the lady cashier.

I proceeded directly to Ikey’s, which is on Sixth Avenue not far from

Bleecker Street. Ikey, I learned from Mme. Storey, had long been

suspected of being a fence, but the police had never succeeded in

getting the goods on him. At any rate he is the friend of every crook

in town. He sells more than old clo’s. He will outfit you with any

kind of a disguise that you require, and is prepared to sew you up on

the spot.

Unlike other stores, Ikey puts his worst foot foremost. All the

shabbiest and most disreputable garments are on display, while the

fancier articles are only brought out upon demand. To the hook-nosed

saleslady who approached me (they have them of both sexes) I said:

“Me brutter wants to hire one of them coon-skin coats like college boys

wear for an evenin’. Have you got any?”

After consultation with somebody in the rear the saleslady reported:

“Yeah, we got them coats for hire, but you’ll have to put up a hundred

dollars deposit.”

“A hundred dollars!” I cried. “He might as well buy him a coat.”

“What ja expect?” she asked scornfully. “That ya could walk out with a

fur coat for fi’ dollars? You git your money back when you bring it

in.”

“Well, I’ll take a look at it,” I said.

She presently flung the coat across the counter; quite a

luxurious-looking garment. But all that interested me about it was a

card tied to the collar bearing mysterious letters and figures. I

supposed that this was the record of the times it had been given out

and returned, like a library card. All I could read were the final

entries. There was a C on each line followed by two dates. I made

believe to look the coat over, and even tried it on, but the woman kept

the card out of my reach. Finally I said:

“I don’t know if me brutter wants to put up a hundred bones on it. Got

any utters?”

“That’s the on’y coon-skin coat.”

“Then show me somepin cheaper. Somepin with an elegant fur collar,

like.”

To my joy she went away leaving the coat lying on the counter with the

card attached. I made haste to examine it. The first entry on the

card read: “Chico, — Bleecker,” and then the dates presumably when it

was given out and returned. All the subsequent entries merely had a C

and two dates. Apparently it had never been taken out but by the one

person. A great satisfaction filled me when I read the last date that

it had been taken out; October 30th. This was the night Tito had taken

Dr. Portal for a ride. There could be but little doubt this was the

right coat.

Well, I got out of Ikey’s with a vague statement that I would “tell me

brutter,” and hastened back to Bleecker Street. The number I was in

search of proved to be just across the street from my lunchroom.

There was a shoe store on the street level, and a tenement overhead.

In the narrow entry alongside the store there was a row of letter-boxes

with names in them, mostly Italian, which suggested nothing to me.

“Chico” was a common nickname, and not of very much use in running my

man down. As I stood there in uncertainty, a loiterer on the pavement

outside said:

“Who ya lookin’ fer?”

“Chico,” I said at a venture.

“Oh, Chico Cardone,” he said. “He boards with Mrs. Mora, top floor.”

I climbed the stairs with a heart full of gratitude towards my

unwitting helper. Luck was with me today.

The upper floors were still unchanged from Bleecker Street’s palmy days

when the house had been a private dwelling. That is to say, all the

rooms opened directly on the stair hall. I knocked at the principal

door on the top floor and it was opened to me a crack by a handsome

Italian girl with a sullen expression. On the way up I had evolved a

new story.

“Excuse me, dearie,” I said in the oily voice of the low-grade book

agent, “have you any young men in your family?”

“No,” she said, and made as if to slam the door, but I shoved my foot

forward and held it open. “Wait a minute, dearie,” I said glibly. “I

got a publication here no young man can afford to be without….”

“Take your foot away!” she said angrily, and added a good masculine

oath. “There’s no young men here.”

“Excuse me,” I said again, “but the name of a Mr. Cardone was give me

as a boarder here.”

“He just rents the middle room from me mutter,” she said, with a jerk

of her head towards the next door. “He don’t board here. Anyhow he

ain’t home now.”

“Well, I’ll come back tonight,” I said.

“That won’t do you no good,” she said with a curious bitterness.

“Nights you’ll find him at Luigi’s caf�.”

With that she aimed a kick at my foot and I hastily withdrew it. The

door slammed, and I went downstairs with a light heart. I smiled to

myself, thinking of the girl’s bitterness. Had Dr. Portal’s handsome

little blackguard been trifling with her affections, I wondered.

I returned to the office full of the consciousness of work well done.

“Good!” said Mme. Storey when she heard my tale. She called up Benny

Abell, who is our principal liaison officer with the underworld;

“Benny,” she said over the wire, “I want to visit Luigi’s caf� at

Number — Bleecker Street tonight. Get busy and find somebody who

knows the joint and can take me. I’ll disguise myself, of course, so I

won’t look out of place there. You’d better come along too.”

When I was for retiring to the back room to scrub the paint off my face

and resume my own clothes, she said: “Why go to all that trouble? With

a change of dress you’ll do very well for tonight as you are. We can

eat here before we start.”

We met our men at nine o’clock that night in a cheap Italian restaurant

near Washington Square, so that we could have a couple of hours in

which to familiarise ourselves with the parts that we were to play

later. In addition to Benny Abell Mme. Storey had called upon George

Stephens, another operative, because the plan she had in mind called

for two men in addition to the Italian who was to conduct us to Luigi’s.

This case followed soon after the Jacmer Touchon affair during which

Mme. Storey had been obliged for purposes of disguise to cut her hair

short. Her hair was now about two inches long, and tonight she wore it

in a tangle of dark curls all over her head like a tousle-headed boy.

It lent her an impudent prettiness that was irresistible. Wherever we

went that night men’s eyes followed her. She was wearing a smart cheap

little red dress and called herself Madge Regan. She has the art of

making herself look common without losing anything of her

attractiveness.

As for me, I modelled myself upon her so far as I was able. Luckily

when she was present I was not obliged to do much talking.

At eleven o’clock the Italian joined us. Benny introduced him simply

as Joe. Benny refused to vouch for him beyond a certain point,

consequently he was not taken into our confidence. He supposed that we

were a party of people from uptown who had disguised ourselves in order

to see a little low life.

We went on to Luigi’s. It was in the basement of one of the ancient

buildings on Bleecker Street that still retained its old-fashioned high

stoop. A barber shop occupied the parlour floor, and presumably there

was a tenement above. My heart sank at sight of the place. True, I

knew that Mme. Storey had taken Inspector Rumsey into her confidence,

and that several plain-clothes men were hanging about the neighbourhood

ready to aid us if necessary; but what good would they be to us, I

asked myself, if they arrived on the scene after we had been shot?

Luigi’s was a depressing-looking joint and I felt sorry for those who

had to take their pleasure there. There was a long room beside the

entrance passage with a row of little tables around it and a narrow

space for dancing in the middle. It was absolutely empty. Behind it

was a smaller room with a bar where several men were drinking and

talking loudly.

The real sanctum sanctorum of Luigi’s was in the rear. It was a

sordid, dirty little room, evidently part of an extension to the main

building. A heavy fog of tobacco smoke filled the air. It was only

big enough to hold four tables, of which two were occupied when we

entered. A large party of young men pressed around a table in one of

the farther corners playing some sort of gambling game with a